Introduction

NVIDIA's latest member of their DirectX 11 lineup is the GeForce GTX 460. It is based on the all new 40 nm GF104 GPU which is based on the Fermi architecture introduced earlier this year. The GTX 460 is positioned at the lower end of the mid-range performance segment around the $200 price bracket. NVIDIA offers two variants of the GeForce GTX 460, one with 768 MB of GDDR5 memory and one with 1 GB. Due to the GPU architecture this change in memory size not only affects the actual memory but also other performance relevant figures. The reduction of memory size is achieved by installing less memory chips on the card which reduces the bus width of the GPU from 256-bit to 192-bit on the 768 MB version. Since the ROPs are coupled to the memory interface this also results in less ROP units. Combined all those changes reduce the fillrates and memory performance of the card by 25%.

MSI's GTX 460 HAWK is the company's flagship GeForce GTX 460 model, and the equivalent of the "Lightning" series which is used on high-end cards like the HD 5870. As thermal solution, MSI's well established Twin Frozr II cooler is working on top of a fully custom designed PCB. MSI has selected clock speeds of 781 MHz core and 900 MHz memory for their card, which is in the upper half of the available out-of-the-box overclocks from all board partners (some go as high as 850 MHz). But the feature list does not end here. Instead of only GPU voltage you can change three voltages on the MSI GTX 460 HAWK, which is a first. Another voltmodder-friendly feature is the addition of voltage measure points for the three voltages that can be modded.